Ben Chasny is excited about his in-store appearance at Aquarius Records in San Francisco this Saturday. And it's only partly because it gives him a chance to play solo acoustic guitar versions of the songs from his new Six Organs of Admittance album "Shelter From the Ash."

He's more enthused that his set follows a signing for a new book about Yo Ho Wha.

"They were this Los Angeles cult led by Father Yod," Chasny explained over a phenomenal and inexpensive lunch at Chichen Itza (formerly Popul Vuh) in the Mission District on a warm Saturday afternoon. "And they had this incredible psychedelic band, Ya Ho Wha 13. I have their 13-CD box set that I've listened to a lot."

Ya Ho Wha 13's "God and Hair" is just one of the arcane references that cropped up in conversation with Chasny about the influences that may or may not have shaped the sound of Six Organs of Admittance, the "band" that Chasny launched in 1998 with a limited-edition vinyl pressing of his first recording. The guitarist — who also performs and records as a member of Comets on Fire and has toured as a guitar-slinger with Will Oldham (Bonnie "Prince" Billy) and Current 93 — also mentioned the late Japanese guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi and the Queens, N.Y., duo Blues Control.

And speaking of arcane, how about the moniker Six Organs of Admittance? Chasny said the name was intended to be temporary. "I got it from reading a book about Chinese hermits and it just struck me as an interesting phrase," he explained. "I wasn't planning on doing any more records at the time, so I just wrote it across the record. I wanted it to be a mystery item. I didn't have my name on it anywhere. I made 400 of them and just sent them out there."

"Six Organs of Admittance" stuck when Chasny decided to do another record. But the notion of mystery has remained, as Six Organs (essentially Chasny and whomever he recruits to flesh out the sound) through EPs, LPs, 7-inch singles and CDs for Holy Mountain, Drag City and other labels. The last three albums on Drag City — "School of the Flower," "The Sun Awakens" and "Shelter From the Ash" — have elevated Chasny's profile even as the Eureka, Calif., native eschews easy identification with any scene or movement.

Indeed, even though he unabashedly relishes psychedelic guitar, citing Jimi Hendrix and Sonny Sharrock as icons, and noted that he grew up with Nick Drake records playing in the house and took up guitar at age 18, inspired by Leo Kottke, Chasny is wary of the "psych-folk" and "freak-folk" labels.

"It's a little scary when it starts to give itself a name and there starts to be a particular code of dress," he said. "I was doing music, and then this whole thing came along, and I kind of got swept up in 'Oh, he's part of that.' It's kind of ridiculous. There's one picture of me when I had a beard, ever. There's a whole bunch of pictures of me on the Drag City Web site, but all I ever see is this goddamn picture of me with a beard. That's just the image people want to grab on to, because they need something that's easy for them to identify with. It's nice that the acoustic guitar started to get some attention, but I think I'm just more of a guitar player who happens to play acoustic guitar. I never really associated with folk music."

To be sure, it's the fascination with the sonic potential of guitars — both acoustic and electric — that most palpably links Chasny with such acoustic forebears as Kottke, Robbie Basho, and avatars of acid-rock guitar like Hendrix, Neil Young, John Cipollina (Quicksilver Messenger Service), Barry Melton (Country Joe & the Fish), Jorma Kaukonan (Jefferson Airplane). On "Shelter From the Ash," Chasny layers whispery fingerpicked guitars, grinding electric leads and ferocious feedback in a fine foggy mix. Along with his Comets on Fire band mate (and Howlin Rain leader) Ethan Miller, James Blackshaw and the Sun City Girls' Sir Richard Bishop, Chasny establishes himself as one his generation's most interesting guitarists.

Six Organs swells to a full ensemble on the new record when Noel Harmonson plays drums, Elisa Ambrogio (of Magik Markers) contributes vocal harmonies and one scorching guitar solo, and co-producer Tim Green adds a panoply of sounds from vibes, Wurlitzer and organ to bowed cymbals and "piano innards." Matt Sweeney (collaborator with Will Oldham in Superwolf) also came in and played a Ry Cooder-esqe acoustic solo on "Strangled Road."

Chasny's breadth of guitar timbres and depth of emotion reach their grandest proportions on such new songs as the beautiful "Strangled Road," the ominous "Coming to Get You" and the haunting title track of "Shelter From the Ash." Vaguely apocalyptic lyrics — "they may even eat the horse that you're riding / swallow this whole world whole" — obliquely address moral and political issues of the day. A shift toward more structured songwriting was deliberate, but so was the strategy to keep the imagery cryptic. "A lot of times I'm pretty satisfied with just one chord, you know, writing a whole song with one chord, or maybe two," said Chasny, who has been listening to early Kris Kristofferson lately. "So I thought I'd throw a third chord in there at times, maybe a bridge or something — get really out there, you know? That was like a new thing for me."

At the same time, however, he didn't want to show his entire hand, politically speaking. "I believe in change and resistance, but the moment someone sets themselves up as an example of resistance is the moment that it's very easy for them to be recouped into the status quo," he argued. "When you see somebody on 'Friends' wearing an MC5 T-shirt or a Stooges T-shirt, resistance is being marketed as mainstream culture. So it's better to be shadowy about what you're doing."

Chasny's role models on that level are the Sun City Girls. Not only is Richard Bishop his current favorite guitar player, but Chasny admires the way the Phoenix-bred band has remained underground for 25 years, and "the way they walk into a room like Persian mafia dudes — you know something a little sketchy is going on, but they don't tell you what's going on. They just don't care; they just do whatever they want, that's what's great. They just do what ever they want."

Similarly, if Six Organs music reminds some listeners of the first wave of '60s psychedelic folk-rockers, Chasny noted, "It's not trying to be retro or anything. It's just the music I grew up with, it's just natural. That's the musical language that I know to be able to communicate ideas."

In the coming weeks, when he's not working up material to send to Hiroyuki Usui in Japan for a second August Born project, Chasny will be figuring out what kind of band he wants to put together for the Six Organs of Admittance tour that will begin in January (after a Comets on Fire plays a New Year's gig with the Melvins at Slim's). It will likely include self-taught guitarist Ambrogio, with whom he lives and with whom he recently toured Europe as a duo: "The first time I saw her play," he said, "I came back and told the guys in Comets on Fire that I just saw someone play guitar the way I wished they'd let me play guitar in Comets on Fire but never do."

On his way to the Hear & Now, Oakland native Derk Richardson nearly finished his Ph.D. in history, wrote a guidebook to Thailand, jerked sodas at Ozzie's in Berkeley and taught scuba for underwater scientific research. He has written about music since 1978 and is host of "The Hear & Now," a free-form music show (every Thursday, 10 p.m.-midnight) on KPFA 94.1 FM.